Tuesday, July 14, 2009

There isn’t much more to tell you about our stay in England. We spent the weekend resting, after going hard all week long.

Monday we went straight to the solicitor. He wanted to know if the words caveat emptor meant anything to us. Anyway, he is undertaking to do the caveating for these emptors.

We went around to the surveyor he recommended. The surveyor does the home inspection and appraisal, or valuation, as they call it here. He will have his report for us by next week, with a copy to the solicitor.

We spent the rest of the day in Ormskirk. We were able to see the flat one more time, and spent a long time talking with the extremely likeable lady who was selling it. She has typed us up a list of local businesses she recommends, from plumbers to grocery stores. She has left us a pile of instruction leaflets for various things in the house, such as the heating system, clothes washer, etc.

After our appointment with Claudia, we went to see if we could find Len, husband of the deceased Olive. We did find him, at the same address as years before.

“Do you know me?” asked Demetrios, standing at the front gate.

“Well, let’s see. You must be from the hospital; most of ‘em are. But you aren’t the German one… You must be … “

“I’m Doctor Theo!”

“Well, I never! Come in, come in! Sit right there; that’s the chair you sat in before, isn’t it now?”

An hour of reminiscing followed, all about the old times. Whatever became of so-and-so and do you remember this, do you remember that? Len did, but I’m quite sure that when we had left, poor Len asked himself, “Who on earth were those people?”

Demetrios says he never sat in that chair before, because he had never been to the house before.

Today, Tuesday, we took the train to London, by a much simpler route than we had come, and have checked in at another Premier Inn very near Heathrow airport. Our flight leaves at noon tomorrow.

We can still hardly believe all that has happened during this so-short stay.